Get Everything Done

Long-time follower of the forum here, but the first time I’ve thought I might have an idea worth sharing. I hope it’s useful to someone!

I have been struggling with a particularly thorny mega-task (PhD thesis-writing) that has been standing up to even the most resistance-breaking of Mark (and community)’s methods. In tough times, I have found a randomizer method great at breaking through procrastination, but of late one weakness has been particularly apparent - I can think of lots of little, unimportant tasks that clutter the list, making it unlikely “work on the darn thesis” gets chosen next. Solutions abound - some sort of SMEMA, 3T, etc. but I’ve wanted to keep the randomizer piece for how well it gets me started when my list makes me want to just give up and take a nap.

So here’s the idea. This can be used as a modification of almost any long-list method, even the recently-popular Serial No-List as I’ll explain below. The modified rules are:

1. Add however many new tasks that come to mind at the end of the list
2. Before selecting a new task, write to the end of the list the task that you are most resisting (alternatively, is most important / substitute your own question here)
3. Consider acting on this last task - if you want to work on it, dot it, do it, cross it out, rewrite it if incomplete, and resume from step 1
4. If you don’t want to work on the task, resume selection as prescribed in your base method (randomizer, AF1, etc.)

I’ve been using the randomizer method with sliding, so it looks like this:

1. As I’m working, I add new ideas to the end of the list, and when I’m done with a task, if it’s incomplete, I add it to the end.
2. I add a final task that a is whatever is top on my mind (most likely my thesis, but could be something urgent)
3. I consider that task, and if I don’t do it…
4. I go back to the place in my list where my last randomly picked task was (I keep a little sticky note on it), and use a random number to count forward to pick my next task.



Thoughts:

Yes, this makes for an ever-growing list. Hence the thread name :-) But I think it's worth it. Sometimes you'll be able to delete a lot of copies at once, and you can use whatever dismissal rule you prefer as usual to keep things tighter. But it will take some paper (or bytes).

Step 2 takes care of the problem of urgent tasks that exists in a lot of methods, in a similar way to how we usually handle it “just write it, dot it, and do it”

Like a lot of long lists, you can go back and forth between methods, too. Like, you can use AF1 until you get stuck, than randomizer, then back. You can really use it with anything - AF4, FVP, etc. I think it has a little flavor of AF2? But I never got into AF2 that much so I'm not sure.

The more you put something off, the denser it will be in the list, making it more likely to be tackled, without feeling forced, since the selection is still random

The list can function purely as Serial No List if rules if the last item is always chosen in Rule 3. Alternatively, you can add the rule to serial no list and just cycle through the last day until you want to look at older days. The idea that this modification encourages repeated listing of tasks makes it very friendly to the spirit of No List methods

When old copies of a task are encountered, after the task is complete, it can be crossed out in a special color to indicate it is “already done”. I’ve found this can give some extra satisfaction to completing a long-put-off task. Coming back around to something that had been so on your mind, and being proud of yourself that you finally took care of it, feels great! And helps reinforce the good feeling of completion, so you don’t just move on to feeling bad about the next thing already.

The old list becomes an interesting record of what your focus was on a given day, if you date the start of each new day

A variant that takes up even more space would be to re-write any task from step 4 end of the list before you do it. This, plus the “use a different color on old task copies” makes it so that a each day’s list clearly shows what you actually did that day (crossed out in normal color) and what you put off but got around to on another day (crossed out in alternate color), as well as what you were worried about (wrote many times), and whether you procrastinated a lot (wrote something a lot that didn’t get crossed out until later). I’ve actually found doing this alleviates the need to keep other sort of trackers, since if I write verbosely like this I can see how often I do things like exercise, and if I mark time spent on thesis tasks I can get a good sense of how much time I spend each day on what really matters.

I think I’ll check back in after a week or so of this to share some more thoughts about how it is going, but I would love to hear what you all think, especially if it sounds useful to anyone!

Lauren

It just occurred to me there is a much easier way to express the modification:

Right before you select a task, write what you’re most resisting at the end of the list.

That’s all it is! But I hope it’s helpful :-)

Thanks, Lauren. This is an intriguing idea. It also addresses the hanging over your head aspect of some huge tasks. Also, if you frequently are adding the same thing, there will be multiple instances of it that with the random method increase the chance of it being chosen if you've been ignoring it.

Thanks for chiming in, Mark! I really appreciate your perspective on all this.

I agree with Alan's comment that the effect of "reducing the priority of everything else" is actually the intended result, here. If I have a list of 13 things, 12 of which are tiny chores like "unload the dishwasher" and "text my brother back", I would prefer that those twelve, as a whole, be reduced in priority compared to the one big thing of "work on my thesis"

I have tried the tactic of breaking the task into parts so the project takes up more space on the list, but have found that not to be that helpful in this case. The task of "work on my thesis" is actually pretty monolithic. Generally, there is one predominant "next step" in GTD parlance, so if I broke the project into 10 pieces, and landed on one of the other 9, I would resist it because I would know the piece I really needed to work on next was the first one.

As for scheduling time blocks to work on it, oh boy have I tried that. And to some extent, I still do. But the work can be so painful that I *need* some random chance of landing on a non-thesis task to make myself willing to face the possibility of work at all.

I guess something similar in effect to what I'm proposing is something I've tried before, though I can't remember if I read it here. To pick a task, first flip a coin to decide if it's a work task (or maybe a "current initiative" task) or not, and if not, proceed by processing the list. That would be similar to having about half the list filled up with that current initiative task, and using the randomizer as usual. With what I'm proposing, you get to follow your intuition over the course of the day as what feels important or subject to resistance.

I have also found that just seeing the same item repeatedly is a little note to myself, "hey, remember how much this is something you wanted to do, and how even when you haven't selected it, it didn't magically go away?" And that reminder can be a helpful encouragement in getting me to pick the task on my own, not just relying on the randomizer to do it.

In practice, too, I have been a little more flexible than I laid out with the frequency with which I add that most resisted task. Sometimes I will pick two tasks from the list that are related, in one go, and just add one thing at the end. That would turn the principal of "whenever you are about to pick a task, add to the end..." to something more like "whenever you find yourself mulling over what to do next, and feel like the task you're putting off deserves to be prioritized more highly, add to the end..."

Like a lot of systems, in practice I think it is a lot more effective if it is "held loosely" than followed to a T.

<< So instead of having, say, 59 standard priority tasks with 1 priority task, you end up with 159 priority tasks and 59 low-priority tasks. In fact you don't "end up" with that situation at all because it will continue to get worse and worse. >>

The other thing to keep in mind here is that, when you finally do address that one priority task, all of its previous iterations get crossed off (when it's complete - so yes in the thesis case you do have to use some discretion about that) so the list ultimately does not have exponential growth. In fact, going through the list and crossing out the old iterations and feeling the list contract down is one of the great incentives for doing those tasks!

Lauren don't waste energy fiddling with lists in order to try and somehow make yourself move your thesis along. That's the tail wagging the dog effect I mentioned in response to another post. If your thesis is on a task list at all it should be on there BECAUSE you already see value in moving it along and want to do it, not to FORCE it to move along against some desire to not do it. I would suggest:

1. Complete Jordan Peterson's Future Authoring programme in order to help you work out why you are doing your PhD and help you determine where your feeling of resistance against doing it is coming from. it's clear that in some sense that you haven't yet resolved it's proving painful and you're using lists/systems as a way to try and gamify it in the hope that you can magic that resistance away.

https://www.selfauthoring.com/future-authoring (the discount code "rogan" for a few dollars remains valid as of this post)

2. Plan out checkpoints with timescales of days for your thesis and work to those. While you're sat down working on them ditch your lists and everything else and just focus on it for however long that is each day. It's a marathon so you're in it for the long haul.

3. Make sure your diet is good so you have energy and are sleeping well. Get plenty of sleep so you get deep sleep and are thinking clearly. Stay hydrated during the day. Try one of the mindful meditation apps available like Dan Harris's Ten Percent Happier or Sam Harris's Waking Up. They're really good.

The way that worked for me to get my last thesis done was .....
1) Writing my thesis was the first thing I did in the morning - before shower, getting dressed, etc.
2) I committed to doing either 3 pages or 3 hrs whichever came first before proceeding with the rest of my day

Lauren: I sympathise with anyone who has procrastination issues. I have suffered with it a lot in the past.

I found the only thing that worked was to “train” myself out of it. I gave myself goals to work through a bunch of task sequentially - one after the other no matter what they were. Urgent, not urgent, easy, hard, long or short task, it does not matter.

To start with it was really really hard to do that. I kept putting certain tasks off for no particular reason. It took a long time before I was actually able to successfully do it. Now it is such a habit, I can easily get in the flow of working through any task without thinking about it too much. No nagging thoughts of wanting to do put it off. Lovely!

NB on really long tasks (projects) I regularly do something on them for a period of time and then add it to the list again for working on later. That would be ideal for your thesis.

The end result of this is that my efficiency has improved so much this year that I am so up to date nothing is ever urgent or needs prioritising. Everything gets done.
Hope that helps.

Absolutely!

Hi Mark, yes I like the principle of the next hour. I think that is more or less what I'm doing.
Only difference is I'm applying it to a category of tasks rather than a time slot.
I think it works perfectly!
I like the way it automatically ensures one works on the specific category of tasks for the right amount of time each day to keep up to date. It easy to monitor if overcommitted so early action can be taken.

Thanks, everyone, for all your thoughts and encouragement. Chris, I will start that self-authoring program you mentioned - it does look interesting. The tactics of breaking up tasks, using a timer, working on diet, sleep, and meditation - that is all great advice, which I have done my best to already follow, but they are helpful reminders, and we can always be better about that stuff.

I know my procrastination is coming form quite a deep underlying "not caring" about the work. I am close to graduating, so finishing makes sense even if it doesn't make me happy (not sunk cost fallacy here - just the trade-off of the work ahead for a degree vs leaving with no degree makes staying worth it). I've been trying to find ways to make it more meaningful, involve more people, make it fun... my guess is there isn't going to be a magic pill, some method or mantra or perspective that will make work easy. It's still going to be hard. The goal is just to do what I can do make it on the "hard but doable" side of "hard".

Thanks again, everyone. There's a lot of wisdom here.

Oh yes, that was a bit vague.
What I meant by “category of task” would be email, post, telecall/meeting notes, post-it notes and a small list of projects.
I suppose I only have 5 categories being the main sources of incoming tasks.
I aim to work solidly clearing emails, then clear post, then telecall/meeting notes etc.

I don’t actually keep a list at all - instead my emails are my main list of tasks. If I think of a new task, I email myself. The list of projects is only the real list I have but I have been trying to eliminate that by controlling them via email instead. E.g. work on a project for a bit and then email myself again for the next bit to do. That works nicely with the little and often principle. I have also been recently emailing myself the action points following telecall/meeting notes to eliminate those as well.

I certainly think if all tasks are all in the same place, then it works so much better. Easy to see how up to date things are and where the backlogs are. Email seems to work fine for me as it sorts into date order.
At the moment I have only got 12 emails in my inbox - life is bliss.